Our latest news...
Hello Chocolate fans!
It's been a while since we've sent out a newsletter, we we're so busy at Christmas we didn't have time to write one!
It proved to be our busiest Christmas ever and our Christmas Orange was undoubtedly the hit of year as it featured in BBC Good Food guide. The weather was also kinder to us at Christmas and we had a splendid Christmas market in Bath. Watch this space for more news on Bath in the near future!
Valentine's is of course getting closer and we have a fabulous Valentine's chocolate range for you....see below!
January is also a busy time to learn new skills and we still have a few spaces on our Introduction to fine chocolate course this Saturday 4th February at our Corsham factory.
It's also a busy time for brides to be and our Croquembouche wedding cakes are looking like a popular choice following their publicity on Masterchef last year.
Our Cirencester shop had a busy Christmas and we now have a wonderful Valentine's heart window display made with solid chocolate roses. Geri is progressing well with her apprenticeship. Diana is also working with the Royal Agricultural College acting as a business mentor for their final year degree students.
That's it for now!
Matthew, Diana & the Lick the Spoon Team
Valentine's Chocolates
 
We have a whole host of delicious Valentine's chocolates for you for from our fiery red and gold milk chocolate heart to our champagne truffles chocolate tin our our salted caramel ballotin.
So have a look at our Valentine's page, there's something for all!
Chocolate Courses 2012
It's that time of the year when many people decide to learn a new skill or even change career. It's also the first time in six months that we've found a gap in the schedule to run a chocolate course!
Our Introduction to fine Chocolate course is a popular introductory course into our world with no prior knowledge required. We still have a few places on our course this Saturday 4th February, you can book online here...
http://www.lickthespoon.co.uk/Introduction_to_fine_chocolate_making_course.asp
You can find more on our courses in general here...
http://www.lickthespoon.co.uk/workshops.asp
We're also running some professional courses in conjunction with the Cotswold Chef, Rob Rees MBE.
Lick the Spoon Cirencester
Our Cirencester shop had a fabulous Christmas, certainly the busiest since opening. January as always has been very quiet but fortunately as pay day strikes, diets are abandoned and we enter February things start to pick up. We're maintaining cakes and Macaroons in our Cirencester store but have made way for a giant chocolate Valentine's heart window display!
Locally in Cirencester Lisa & Matthew attended the launch of the Cirencester Business awards 2012 which we did so well in last year winning two awards. Following the excitement of Christmas lights in Black Jack Street for the first time ever Cirencester is now bedecked with bunting ready for a Royal year of celebration.
We have a fabulous team in Cirencester and Geri is progressing well with her apprenticeship having passed her first review with flying colours!
If you haven't seen it there is a rather fabulous film on Cotswold TV of the opening of our Street party last summer.
http://www.furryfeet.tv/cotswolds/venue_video.php?footprint=404
We have developed close ties with the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester and Diana has agreed to mentor their final year degree students through their business projects.
Wedding Cakes 2012
2012 is so far proving the year of the Croquembouche. The Croquembouche is traditional french style wedding cake and we are one of the few cake makers to specialise in them. As always we add our own chocolate twist!
Both Masterchef and the Great British Bake Off featured Croquembouches last year and consequently their popularity has increased. We've changed our wedding cake gallery so it can now be browsed from an iPhone.
So if you're thinking of getting married why not give us a call!
  
New Stockists
We've continued to increase our stockists whilst maintaining a spread such that we don't become too heavily reliant on a single large store. We continue to supply many of the luxury stores such as Harvey Nichols, Liberty Fenwick and John Lewis Foodhalls Oxford Street & Bluewater.
We're also very pleased to have increased our presence with small independent farm shops and delicatessens, we welcome Champion Wines in Chislehurst, Kent.
Our list of stockists is growing all the time. Please check our stockist page for details.
If you know of someone who you think should stock us why not mention us, we have a new wholesale login page and love to meet new independent outlets.
That's it for now!
Chocs away
Matthew, Diana & the Lick the Spoon team
 
Lick the Spoon launches Valentines 2012 collection
10th January 2012
It's here..our 2012 Valentine’s Chocolate Collection! What Valentines already you say?
Our fabulous 2012 Valentine's chocolate collection features a shimmering red and gold milk chocolate heart with a surface that looks almost like polished marble.
We're super excited that Harvey Nichols will be selling the Valentine's Chocolate heart in all of their stores. Hurrah!
Accompanying the heart is a half chocolate heart filled with three of our award winning Champagne truffles decorated with cocoa butter designs. The heart and truffles are elegantly packaged in a heart shaped tin.
Our Valentine's 2012 collection also features a two chocolate balotin with salted caramels, a valentine's version of our popular Rose Crisps and a selection of fun Valentine's lollies including "Be my Sweetie" and "Hots for You". Of course our now famous (and delicious) Chocoroons also make the perfect Valentine's chocolate collection.
  
Though it's fabulous to launch in stores like Harvey Nichols we still want to work closely with our independent farms shops and delicatessens. Many independent stockists may still be buying for Valentine's day so why not give us a call or drop us a mail!
The official press release can be found here... www.lickthespoon.co.uk/Valentines_2012.asp
Musings on Chocolate Wedding Cakes
3rd January 2012
It's that time of year when couples to be get together with family and start to plan the details of their wedding.
For us this is one of the peak times for Wedding cake enquiries and is unusual in that almost all customers are new customers
and many have never contemplated chosing a wedding cake until this point!
Planning a wedding is rather daunting and there is usually a hierachy of decisions with venue and Wedding dress being at the start of
the list. Thus many couples find us through venues that have recommended us based on past wedding cakes.
  
Our speciality is of course chocolate and to that end we leave iced fruit cakes to the many excellent sugar craft cake makers.
For us the magic is creating beautiful and delicious creations from real chocolate that use a very different skill set from sugar craft.
It is however possible to create a chocolate wedding cake that mirrors the style and appearance of a traditional iced wedding cake.
We also make the traditional french style wedding cake the Croquembouche, as this too has it's own specialised techniques.
We consider the croquembouche too delicate to deliver as a whole and prefer to build them and spin the caramel at the venue
so they are exceptionally fresh. We have sometimes been asked to present them to the guests as they are quite a magnificent creation.
One of our most enduring and popular styles of Wedding cake is the individual desert.
These are usually presented with a top tier for cutting though a bottom tier is also popular. We make the individual cakes in a variety
of flavours including chocolate fudge cake, baked and unbaked cheesecakes, mousses with fruit coulis and Blackforest.
The cakes are decorated with chocolate wraps featuring delicate cocoa butter designs. The advantage of the Indivdual desert wedding cakes
is that they can be easily served as a desert for your guests and offset some of the catering cost. The top tier presents the cutting for camera opportunity.
The mousse and cheesecake styles need to be chilled until just before serving so we carefully time the setup to occur just before the wedding breakfast.
For longer distance weddings we sometimes liase with the venue and use their refrigerators for overnight storage so we can be sure the cakes are at the venue in good time!
Many people are worried about chocolate wedding cakes with regard to heat and melting chocolate. This is rarely a problem in the UK as correctly
tempered chocolate is stable at room temperature. We do however always take care to avoid direct sunlight falling on the cake and sometimes reposition
cake tables based on the sun's position through the day as this is a detail that venues often overlook, particularly if it's cloudy when the cake is set up.
All of our decorations are made from solid chocolate using a special technique that requires lot's of dexterity and an artistic touch.
Design wise people sometimes show us pictures of cakes they like or often the design is left completely in our hands.
All of our team are dexterous and artistic and Diana herself was a freelance artist for two years in France and Italy before a life in chocolate was just a twinkle in her eye!
We believe that this artistic background shows through in our Wedding cake designs and that we also have a particular and unique style.
We are holding a number of Wedding consultations in our Cirencester shop this Saturday 7th January, so if you would like to book a consulation please give us a call on 01225 811125.
Hello Chocolate fans!
It's National Chocolate Week - well every week is chocolate week for us!
We did very well at the Taste of the West awards again though the category judging was clearly tougher this year. We won two Gold awards and two silver awards, the only chocolatier to win gold and have been invited to the award ceremony at the Eden project in November (fingers crossed!).
Our Cirencester shop has been going from strength to strength following the pedestrianisation work. We've now launched our own range of cakes including lemon Meringues, florentines, Sacher tortes and last week we launched Macaroons! We have also taken on our first apprentice Geraldine in conjunction with Cirencester college.
We've also had a fun branding excercise with the Bath Univeristy Creative Digital Media students and you can read more below.
In partnership with Bowood hotel, golf & country club we made the Wedding cake for a Hero for Afghanistan veterans and bride & groom to be. We're also now an official supplier to the army and will be taking part is an army event next month- the army needs chocolate!
We have some prestigious new stockists including John Lewis Food Halls (Oxford Street & Bluewater), Fenwicks, Dukes Hill and P&O Cruise lines; and have increased our presence at Harvey Nichols and Liberty where we now have a brass 'our story' plaque (whoop whoop!).
Lots of tasting events for Chocolate week and the start of our food festival season!
So much to say so little time!
Matthew, Diana & the Lick the Spoon Team
Food Festivals and Tastings
We'll be at the Marlborough Feast of Food on Saturday 22nd October. This will be our third year and it really is a fabulous event with all proceeds donated to Cancer research. Even the check for our stall fee is made out directly to Cancer Research.
We'll be at Harvey Nichols, Bristol Friday 14th October, and, Harvey Nichols Knightsbridge Saturday 15th October
Lots more events in the pipeline next newsletter.
Taste of the West awards 2011
  
Once again this summer we headed down to Exeter armed with the chocolates we entered for judging. The chocolates are deposited carefully at Westpoint arena and that's it, fingers crossed as we head home. The judges are made up from industry experts and overall product judge is chef Rick Stein. We are never complacent about these awards but all judging is subjective so it's also important to have faith in your own products just in case the judges don't agree.To make our life even more interesting we entered all new products this year rather than rest on our laurels from our success in 2010.
In 2010 we won Best of Chocolate throughout the South-West with our Rum & Raisin truffles as well as a total of 5 gold awards, so the obvious choice would have been to enter the same products again. But never ones to do the obvious we entered all new products!
We were delighted therefore when our Timeless Truffles and Cardamom & Coffee bar both won gold and our Sea Salt & Butterscotch bar and Chocoroons won silver. The inspiration for the Timeless Truffles came from the idea that as a chef you travel the journey of experimentation but eventually will discover the excellence of simplicity.
The judging of the Chocolate category showed a much greater spread of awards than the 2010 awards and consequently we were very pleased to be the only chocolatier to win gold awards.
We have been invited to the awards ceremony in the Mediterranean Biome at the Eden project in November so fingers crossed!
Halloween!
  
We have some fun Halloween products and these are also stocked by all of the Harvey Nichols stores.
All are made from single origin fine chocolate.
Our Spooky skull is filled with Rasberry Goo - £4-95
Our Spooky Spider is filled with chocolate drops - £4-95
Our Halloween lollies are £2-50 each
Lick the Spoon Cirencester
We've now launched a whole range of cakes in our Cirencester shop including Lemon meringue (Itallian meringue), Salted caramel brownies, Sacher Torte, Florentines, apricot tarts and Macaroons!
We have been varying the cakes week by week to see just what people like. We've already settled on some favourites including Lemon Meringue and of course Macaroons!
We have had some staff changes over the summer and we are delighted that Lisa who has been with us since our shop opening is now our shop manager. We are also excited to be working with Cirencester College and have our first ever apprentice Geraldine who is already winning plaudits with her natural customer manner. Geraldine is studying for an Advanced retail apprenticeship.
Chocoroons
Our Chocoroons have continued to win prestigious new customers and also confuse some people who think they are chocolate covered Macaroons (they aren't). They are completely original chocolates beautifully packaged.
They are to be featured in Aston Martin's gift guide and are stocked in Fenwicks. We are also delighted to partner with royal warrant holder Dukes Hill ham who will be supplying Chocoroons in their hampers this christmas.
Wedding Cakes 2011...Wedding for a Hero
 
We were honoured to make the Wedding cake for the Bowood Wedding for a hero. Lance Corporal Reader was deployed with his battalion to the volatile region of Babaji. During the tour LCpl Reader's company of 120 men sustained a large number of casualties and soldiers killed in action. LCpl Reader was caught up in a lot of these incidents and subsequently treated a number of the wounded himself certainly saving the lives of at least two soldiers through his actions alone. These and other acts of bravery earned him the Military Cross. Thus it was an honour to make the cake for Marc & Charlie's wedding and in our small way support our armed forces.
  
New Stockists    
We've been working hard to increase our stockists whilst maintaining a spread such that we don't become too heavily reliant on a single large store. We were very excited to finally launch in John Lewis Oxford street and Bluewater food halls after eighteen months of meetings, technical analysis and paperwork.
We're also excited to have increased our presence in Harvey Nichols from 3 lines last Christmas to 18 lines this year. Diana & Nina (pictured above) were featured in the Harvey Nichols press day in July, one of only three chocolatiers to do so. Subsequently BBC Good Food magazine are featuring our Christmas Orange in their gift choice this year (more of Christmas in the next newsletter).
Fenwicks are another prestigious new stockist and has significantly increased our presence in the North of England and in their flagship Newcastle store in particular.
We are also delighted to be supplying P&O cruiselines for their on ship boutiques this Christmas.
We first met Dukes Hill ham on the Alan Titchmarsh show two years ago (name drop - clang!). Both Lick the Spoon and Royal warrant holders Dukes Hill were named as National treasures by Alan. So it is with great pleasure that we have teamed up with them this Christmas supplying our Chocoroons, Timeless Truffles and Christmas Orange.
We're also very pleased to have increased our presence with small independent farm shops and delicatessens, if it wasn't for Allington Farm shop first stocking us five years ago we wouldn't be in the luxury stores. Congratulations to Naomi & Tim of Allington Farm shop on the recent birth of their first child.
Our list of stockists is growing all the time. Please check our stockist page for details.
If you know of someone who you think should stock us why not mention us, we have a new wholesale login page and love to meet new independent outlets.
The Apprentice! with Bath University and Wiltshire College
 
We had lots of fun last week working with the students of Bath Universiy and Wiltshire Colleges Creative Digital Media foundation degree. We did an Apprentice style brief to them on Monday and they then interviewed and filmed us throughout the week. On Friday afternoon they did their pitch to us. There were some good ideas as well as some that need a bit of thinking about!
It was great fun to do and the way the students conducted themselves was a credit to Bath Uni & Wiltshire College. The future for the UK is bright we think with young talent like this!
That's it for now!
Chocs awayy
Matthew, Diana & the Lick the Spoon teamm
 
|
